Lesbos, Greece: The Last Spindles of the Stairs...

With The Last Spindles From The Stairs, I Build A Small Fire...

photos and text by Justen Ahren

In 2018, I volunteered with a small, Norwegian non-profit, A Drop in the Ocean, rescuing refugees coming ashore on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Mentally, physically and emotionally, this was one of the most challenging things I’d ever done.

How I decided to volunteer is a credit, in large part, to my 15 year old son, who, during a conversation one evening about the book I was writing about the refugee crises in Europe, suggested I “do something to help the people” I was writing about.

Two weeks later, I was patrolling a 10-mile stretch of Lesbos coastline in a car I rented, with Hussein, a 20 year old Iraqi man, who, himself had made the crossing in a raft 18 months before.

From 11pm until 7am, I drove the beach road south of Mytilini, Lesbos' capital city, past the airport, to a headland where the road became dirt and climbed west, while Hussein scanned the ocean for boats with a pair of binoculars. Patrol is a bare bones operation. It has been carried out nightly since August 21, 2015 when Trude Jacobsen, founder of Drapen i Havet (A Drop in the Ocean) first began assisting local citizens in caring for people arriving by the thousands on Lesvos.

Hussein and I drive back and forth covering the 10 kilometer of coast in an hour. We drive with the windows down though it is March and barely 43 degrees. We don't turn on the radio. There is little conversation. Hussein, who is training me says it's important to listen as well as to look. There aren't any lights on the boats, except sometimes a flashlight or a cellphone. Mostly you hear people talking before you see them.

The trunk and backseat of the car are loaded with bottles of water, trash bags of clothes--one for men, one for women, one for children. There is another bag of assorted hats, gloves and coats, and snow boots. Basically, we get what has been donated by people from around the world. There is a warehouse outside of town where donations are sorted and can be requested. In addition to these items, we have a stack of hypothermia blankets that look like large sheets of aluminum foil, and an emergency phone to call in landings and communicate with other lookouts at Campfire and on the headland where we turn around. These are stationary watches. We are mobil and responsible for all the stretches of coast in between.

One night we come across a landing site. We'd passed this area only 30 minutes before and hadn't seen a boat, or people. Now, 45 people were sitting together in the sand, on their bags, and suitcases, waiting. As landings go, this one was easy. We phoned it in and while we waited for police, doctors, lawyers, and EMTs who would soon rush in, we handed out water and blankets.

Other landings weren't so calm. One night a boat came ashore below a rocky cliff side beyond the paved road. It was raining hard and very windy. Many people were either too sick, too old or too young to climb the steep hillside in the night. People had to be carried up, and one person stretchered to the road.

If I'd come in to this wanting to be part of landings in order to feel I was serving, I quickly preferred nights, even weeks passing, without one. Even when no one comes ashore, patrolling set my mind and body on edge. And not only me, all of us were in constant state of anxious alertness, adrenaline flowing, existing in the impending emergency that at, you knew, at any moment could come ashore. I began to bring extra shirts with me on patrol as I sweat-soaked at least one or two every night.

Life Jacket Graveyard, Molyvos, Greece, 2018

The Turkish coast is two and a half miles from Lesvos. The lights of seaside villages sparkle like stars against the dark mountains. The majority of crossings are made at night in inflatable rafts supplied by smugglers who are paid $1000 per person and squeeze 40-60 people on a boat. Without a navigation system, and only a small, outboard motor, the captain—picked out of the group of men, many who have never seen the ocean let alone piloted a boat, are instructed to steer towards the bright lights of Lesvos airport. Tides, currents, wind, waves, coast guard patrols, fishing boats all alter their course. The refugees on the boat don’t know who is friend and who will return them to Turkey and so they avoid all vessels. Because the eastern part of Lesbos is the closest European land to Turkey, most crossings are occurring on the stretch of beach we were now with patrolling. During the short time I was there, 2500 people made the crossing. 43 people drowned.

Every one of these life vests was worn by a person.

During the day a community center operated by A Drop in the Ocean is a place where refugees living in Moria refugee camp come for a home cooked meal, to listen to music, smoke, dance, and get away from the squalid, overcrowded, and violent camp.

Here at Home Away, I served and took meals with Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Sudanese, and was able to listen to people's stories. I've translated a few of these here changing only the names of people in order to protect those still seeking asylum. All other details of these stories are as I heard them.

Here then are stories from Alma, a Syrian student, Hussein an unaccompanied Afghani boy, and Haya, a Syrian mother of four.

What I hope to preserve here, as well as in my poetry collection, A Machine for Remembering--which draws directly from of experiences on Lesbos--is not the abstractions of the crises, the waves, floods and hordes portrayed in the media,

but the private, intimate stories from moments in individual's lives.

I hope the stories help us see that actual people are making these difficult journeys, and to realize that if we had no further choices, each of us would do the same

to survive.

"My sister and I stood on chairs in the yard and ate all the leaves off the tree."

Alma's Story:

I was a student of English Literature in Damascus before the war. Damascus, the name of my city sounds more beautiful to me now. I still can hear my street coming alive with birds in the morning. This music was later replaced by mortar blasts, concrete collapsing, sirens.

My father wanted me to leave when the war began but I wanted to finish my studies. I only had a year left to get my degree. I didn't think the fighting would come here. I begged him to let me stay. By the time I graduated, it was very dangerous to travel. But it would have been more dangerous to stay.

In October, I left with my mother and sister. We each packed one suitcase and left in the middle of the night. We walked to Turkey.

I love the English poets, especially Yeats. I love how they express themselves. We do not have so many ways to say things in my language. I've learned from reading English poetry, how to name the beauty that is locked inside me.

From Turkey it is easier. Not easy, but easier. We took a bus to Istanbul and another to the coast. We crossed on a boat with 43 others. It took 3 hours. We were all wet and cold but when we arrived we were given jackets, blankets, food and water. On the beach my mother asked us to prayer for our father who remained at home. We prayed he would come and we would be together in Germany, or England.

We've been in Moria for 5 months. We live in a tent inside the camp. It is cold here and...I don't want to describe the smell or the filth and the horror of it. Girls wear diapers so they don't have to use the bathrooms. So many have been assaulted there.

I was granted asylum but my mother and sister have not yet received their papers. I won't leave them. We've lost too much already. My mother suffers here. Her hands shake, she can't control them. They flutter at her face, in her lap, against her body. She worries.

There is no love here in Moria. Where there is so much trauma, people can't love. Among rats and barbed wire, and the cold and wounded people, Moria is a fist that punishes us every day.

I don't write poetry about this place. I only write love poems, poems about love. I fill these poems with what I love--my father, Damascus, orchards, birds, Syria. I write to my future self and I tell her that was plenty of love so she will remember. This is how I survive.

Yeats said, "happiness depends on our energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a rebirth as something not one's self." I must try on some other mask, one that allows me to exercise love, or else the love in me will die. And if love dies, I'll be lost.

Hussein's Story: 15-year-old Afghani boy living in Moria Camp.

The guards in Moria took my shoes to keep me from running away. They take all the boys' shoes.

The small motor on the raft, pushed us over the dark ocean. We were just a light on the ocean. A brief, flickering.

For 11 days I walked. From my village. From my family. Each step was further away from them than I'd ever been in my life.

I had never seen the ocean. How would i recognize it when I got there? For 11 days I walked to get a bus to bring me to the ocean.

I am the oldest of four, this is why my parent's sent me. They saved money to send me to Europe to work. I have to get to Europe and work or all they have sacrificed is for nothing. 3000 kilometers for nothing.

I met two boys my age while I walked, Amir and Hamid. We traveled together. We prayed together. Like brothers. We slept beside the road. We shared our food. We shared our stories of war.

The bus went to Tehran and from there to the border of Turkey. We hired a smugglers at the border to drive us to Istanbul. Three nights and we drove and slept in the car during the day. The driver went very fast, 150 kph. Six of us in the car, not including the driver.

From Istanbul we went to Ayvalik, where we learned you could pay to smugglers for a space on a boat to Greece. The first time we tried, we were detained by police. At the station, we were questioned, "where are you from?" We heard only Syrians were allowed to go. Everyone else was being sent back. Amir didn't know this. He said he was Afghani. Hamid and I throw our documents in the trash and, when asked, we say we are Syrian and are allowed to go.

When I saw the ocean for the first time, I couldn’t breathe. The size and weight of it. The sound it made clawing and dragging rocks and sand under it, and laying on top of the land and filling it with itself.

At 1 a.m., 62 of us board the raft, 31 children, 23 men, 8 women. The smuggler picks Hamid to captain the boat. He shows Hamid how to start the engine by pulling the cord, how to throttle, how to steer. He points over the crashing waves to a line of lights on the horizon and tells Hamid to steer toward them. It's the airport on Lesvos. People will find you there.

Hamid had never been in a boat. None of us had. There was no moon. We were just beyond the waves when the engine died. People start yelling at Hamid. We were scared and already wet. There are too many of us in the raft. It sits low in the water. Water comes in over the front and the sides. I sit next to Hamid. He gives the cord a few panicked pulls and it starts. We head again towards the lights which sometimes are swallowed by the ocean.

We are a light on the ocean. Brief. Flickering. The small outboard engine barely pushes us forward. Our clothes are wet through. We are halfway, maybe a little more, and already 3 hours at sea. People are falling asleep. Those seated on the edge can’t sleep. But a boy does nod off or perhaps slips over the side into the water and is swallowed by the dark.

There is screaming. Hamid begins to circle back, but the men yell at him. We will run out of gas. There is shouting in many languages. Gesturing go forward. Gesturing go back. The boy’s mother is held in the boat by others. We do not go back. We aim for the lights. We reach the lights.

I was the captain, Hamid repeats for days. All he will say is, I was captain.

“With the last spindles from the stairs I built a small fire.

If I could give my children pears instead of butchers paper.”

“When the soldiers came everyone was quiet at first. But soon we lied

about our neighbors for bread, for shoes, you do what you must.”

Landing Site, Lesvos, Greece, 2018. Clothes in trees and by the road side where landings occurred are a common site.

Haya's Story:

43-year-old Syrian woman, mother of four children, and pregnant. Excerpt from conversation at Shower Power, a safe bathhouse for women and children, Mytilini, Greece. March 22, 2018

Let me help. Please. Let me wash the dishes, the towels, scrub the showers. Give me something to do. I need to do something I am accustomed to doing. Something I’ve done my whole life. I can’t stand in front of my students again. I have no classroom. Let me sweep or do the laundry. You miss the the mundane, the routine work you’ve done all your life when it is gone.

I was a professor at a University. My husband was, too. We had a good life. A good middle-class life. We had a home in a good neighborhood. We had four children, careers we enjoyed, two cars. We were blessed. Thanks Allah.

When the war started, there was little food, and during the winter, hunger dug deep. My husband and I were let go from the University because of our ‘political leanings’. Every day we stood in line for bread. We detoured around areas soldiers patrolled. My husband was frequently interrogated, and harassed, they wanted to know who he was fighting for if not with them?

He was killed by bomb in the market. After this, it was impossible for me stay. I took a wheelbarrow and loaded our suitcases in it and we left. The youngest kids took turns riding in the wheelbarrow, on the suitcases, while I pushed.

I miss my husband. I dream of the buttons on his winter coat. Of his winter coat I have often dreamed. Of a snowflake landing on the sleeve, I watch as it slowly melts. I dream of the soldier's rifles aimed at the buttons of his coat, and of the silence, the miraculous silence before the explosion in the market. Of all that has been interrupted, I dream.

I made it to Greece with all four children. But things aren't much better here. People take advantage of others no matter where you are. I was raped in a camp in Turkey by a guard while using the shower.

Today, is the first time I've bathed since, seven weeks. Last week felt nauseous. I knew. I bought a pregnancy test. I don’t want this child of the guard who raped me. But it is a sin. But isn't it a sin to not love a child, and how can I love this reminder of violence, this shame?

Please, Give me something to do. Let me help. Let me one thing I used to do.